I really enjoy seeing all of the different matte paintings here, so I thought I'd share one of my latest with you all. It started out as a quick rock sculpt in Zbrush just to test it out and become more familiar with the process (still working that out), but I decided to turn it into a matte painting. I wasn't really aiming for realism with this one, just wanted to nail a specific mood. I was inspired by The Hobbit, Pacific Rim and the work of Blizzard cinematics.

The main mountain and most of the trees are 3D, which was a small challenge in itself as I am not yet very familiar with 3D packages. I'm planning on doing a projection, but not sure when it will be available.

Hey Bobby,
Great piece and details. In my humble opinion I think that the moon takes all the attention, also reflections on the rocks are pretty strong and it looks like there is another source of light - it's a little confusing. I might be wrong

Dear Bobby,
You have created a very stylized image but achieved a great mood! It feels good although there are several lighting issues. What is working for you is the fact that it's a night time scene and there could be hidden light sources. You have a good sense of balance though and a good artistic eye. Keep that up. There's some tonal discontinuity such as the moon, the sky, the trees and some strange spot lighting here and there. One major thing to fix is the hue and saturation of your FG vegetation, as it appears really staged right now.
Give this another go and do a Photoshop paint-over. The way I would tackle it is by temporarily hiding the green elements, integrating that hard-edged moon better, balancing the lighting and then addressing the trees by integrating it into the rest.
It'll be a great image once it's done. Even though it is fairly cinematic, you might want to take cues from real life night photography instead of looking at movies or videos.

Hey Milan, thanks so much for your comments! They have already help me realize some things that I missed originally. The FG trees were somewhat of a problem throughout making this, I kept going back and forth with the color and saturation trying to find a good mixture, I probably went too far with it.

This is really cool looking and you've got a great atmospheric mood as well really nailing your inspirations noted. As Milan's critique stated, there's just lots of colors going on, especially in the sky where it could be more unified, and having the white balance on the hotter part of the clouds near the moon be more neutral white, and then falling off to a more saturated blue like you wanted (much like The Hobbit). Also stay clear of the mixing green in the tones there, and over processed colors that tend to give the sky tones a more posterized looking artifact. All other notes are great from previous feedback, can't wait to see what you come up with in your next revision. Love the rocks, great detail and nice strong reflection as well as lovely strong orange glowing firelight complementing the blue colors in this palette.

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